According to data from the BassGold.com bass patterning app, Michigan’s Kevin VanDam is the prohibitive favorite to win this month’s Bassmaster Classic championship on Lake Guntersville, Ala.

“Putting aside the fact that Kevin may be the best bass fisherman to have ever walked the planet, two data-driven reasons make him the odds-on favorite to win the Classic,” said BassGold CEO Jay Kumar.

One is that BassGold shows definitively that crankbaits outperform any other bait when it comes to wins and high finishes on Guntersville. “This is exactly as true in February as it is all year long: Crankbaits account for 33 percent of wins and high finishes,” Kumar said. “That’s nearly three times more than the next most effective bait: jerkbaits in February, and jigs year-round.”

The second reason is the stats show that the Strike King pro is a crankbait master both this time of year and in Classics. In the prior five Bassmaster Classics, VanDam has won an incredible 100 percent of the time when the crankbait bite is dominant: in 2011 on the Louisiana Delta, and in 2010 on Lay Lake, Ala.

“Not only that,” Kumar noted, “Lay Lake is the same water body type – what BassGold classifies as a ‘riverine reservoir’ – as Guntersville. This is significant because BassGold has definitively proven that water bodies of the same type, no matter where they are, fish very similarly.”

VanDam has also finished 8th and 11th in the 2013 and 2012 Classics, respectively, and third in a Bassmaster Tour event on Guntersville held in late February 2004.

“Does all of this mean that Kevin will definitely win the Classic?” Kumar asked. “Not necessarily. That’s one of the great things about professional bass fishing: You never know who will win, and other guys definitely can and will do well. But data doesn’t lie, and in this case it points to a tournament that lines up really favorably for the mighty KVD.”